Author's infos

Introduction:

Old habits die hard...but everything dies eventually.

Pyre (3)

You Don’t Have To Be Rich…

“Hey! Hey mister! Did you see the sign when you came in? No shoes, no service!”

I slumped against the glass door of the cooler at the back of the corner store down the street from my apartment building, trying to open it despite my weight being against it. I must have looked like a crazy person. I felt like a crazy person. I was a crazy person. “I’m just here for the booze…”

“Get out! No no! Don’t touch that! You get all dirty! Get out of my store!”

“Yeah. Fine. Whatever,” I mumbled as I left the store, tipping over a little metal rack of postcards by the till as I passed. I didn’t mean to, but it probably looked like I did because the little Korean woman behind the counter was now in front of the counter with a baseball bat in her hands.

“Go now!” she yelled, shaking the bat at me. Her son came out from the back of the store, peering around the shelves to see what was going on.

“Michael?” he asked. “Hey, Michael, are you okay?”

“You know this bum? You get him out of the store!” his little mother shouted.

“Fuck, both of you, shut UP!” I yelled as I struggled to pull the door open and half stepped, half fell out into the street. “I’m fucking leaving, are you happy now?”

Her son, I think his name was Steve, came out after me and put his hand on my shoulder while asking again if I was okay. I pulled away from him and bumped into someone else on the street who shoved me away from them with a sneer like they’d been forced to put their hand in a toilet or something.

“What’s going on, Michael? You okay?” Steve asked.

“Oh fuck yeah, never been better,” I muttered sarcastically.

“Michael, you’re not wearing shoes. Are you drunk, Michael?”

“No, that’s the problem. I need to get drunk right fucking now,” I said, slouching against the front window of his family’s little shop.

“You sure, Michael? You don’t look so good,” he said, standing in front of me and bending at the knees to get a better look at my face through my hair hanging in my eyes.

“Look, you need a program Michael. Twelve steps or something. You need help? Can I help you?”

I took a crumpled wad of bills from my pocket and held them out to him. “Whiskey.”

“No Michael, you need some real help. You don’t need to drink more,” Steve said to me, concern obvious in his voice.

“Yeah, man. I really do.” I thrust the money towards him again. “Whiskey.”

Warily Steve took the money from me and said, “Wait here.”

I slipped down the window and sat on the sidewalk. The people walking by were looking at me like a storm washed me up there at their feet. Like their cat had left me on the porch. I didn’t like thinking about cats, it reminded me of the Chairman. The Chairman was Mark’s old cat. I’d loved that cat when I was a little kid. Most kids learned about death when their first pet dies, but I was well versed in the concept by the time that old bastard finally kicked off when I was 9. Still, it broke my heart. He’d always loomed over me when I slept, he was the first thing I’d see every morning when I woke up and the last thing I’d see before I went to sleep.

Steve came back out with a cheap bottle of whiskey in a brown paper bag and held it to me. “Here Michael, you kill yourself now?”

“I’m not going to die, dude. I just need a drink right now,” I said, taking the bottle from him and nodding my thanks.

“Yeah, my father said he wasn’t going to die either but he did anyways,” Steve said forcefully. “He look like you towards the end. Pale and sick. Only wanted more to drink so he didn’t feel. Now go, Michael. Go do your dying somewhere else.”

I took the cap from the bottle and pulled a long swallow. “It’s that or live, I guess. May as well get on with one of them.”

“You think this is a joke? You trying to be funny, Michael? Go, now. You go now and don’t come back.”

“Fuck it then, whatever,” I said as I pushed myself to my feet. “Later, Steve.”

“You look like a dead man already,” Steve said as I turned to shamble off down the sidewalk. “And you smell like one.”

“Fuck you,” I mumbled back at him as I pushed past some surprised guys in suits with briefcases.

“Watch it buddy,” one of them said as I bumped his shoulder.

“Whatever,” I said hoarsely.

I slid through the people on the streets, sneaking sips and swallows from my bottle, pushing past them as they marched home from work in orderly lines and little groups. Start, stop, wait, go; their rhythms determined by lights and signs and predetermined patterns laid out by some city planner that would never meet any of them. I doubted any of them would ever even meet themselves. If they did, if they saw themselves standing on a corner waiting for the little box to tell them it was okay to walk, would they even recognize themselves?

I grabbed one guy by the lapel of his jacket while he tried to decide whether to challenge the flashing hand and make a break for it to catch his bus. “Do you know how many people died for you to be able to do this today? Is this what you’re going to with what they fought for?”

“Let go of me!” he yelled. People were turning to stare as he yanked his jacket free of my hand. “What’s your problem?”

I poked him in the chest and breathed liquor into his face, “You’re my problem!” I pointed at the little crowd waiting to cross. “You’re all my problem! Look at you! All of you! You’re little proles, dots on a graph!”

Whispers of ‘he’s crazy’ and ‘what a psycho’ and ‘it’s never boring in the city is it?’ Little snips and snipes behind hands and under their breath. ‘Go sleep it off’ and ‘at least we have jobs’ and ‘look at this bum’.

I took another long pull from the bottle and climbed on top of a newspaper box, holding the lamp post it was chained to to support myself on my unsteady bare feet. “You’re all blind! Can’t you see!? These are the last days of Rome!”

“Oh, and you’re going to help us see?” one guy, holding a briefcase in one hand and a folded umbrella in the other. “What is this, the sermon on the mount or something? You’re fucking drunk!”

I stumbled when I tried to climb down and fell on my side, hitting my head on the sidewalk. ‘Hey, he didn’t spill a drop!’ someone joked. ‘Figures…’ another responded. I pulled myself to my feet and looked around with bleary eyes to find the smart ass who’d called me out.

“Watch!” I yelled, putting my hand on his face as he tried to pull away. “Free your eyes!”

I felt a surge of adrenaline in my stomach and my head cleared for a second. I saw his eyes go wide and he dropped his case and umbrella, falling to his knees in front of me with my hand on his forehead. I felt and heard his mind go blank, then it filled with images and feelings from me. His eyes went wide and filled with tears.

“Hey! What’s he doing to that guy?” someone yelled and I felt hands on my arms pulling my away. I jerked myself free and spun on whoever was grabbing at me, pushing them back by shoving my open palm into their chest. They fell back, banging into the newspaper box I’d been standing on and grunting in pain.

“Someone call a cop!” another person yelled. They were spreading out now, trying to stay back from me. Most of them saw the light change and just went back on with their day.

“I can heal the blind!” I yelled. I looked down and the guy I’d touched on the head was crawling away from me too, pulling himself up onto a bus bench with that startled and awed look still on his face. I took another long drink, upending the bottle of whiskey and emptying it down my throat. “Come and see! All of you!”

“Alright there, tough guy,” a stern and officious voice said to my right. I turned and looked to see two beat cops, one stood back a bit and had his hand on his gun and the other had his nightstick out as he stepped towards me. “Why don’t you calm down and come with us over here and have a talk, okay?”

“Yeah, let’s do that,” I said belligerently. I don’t know what had come over me. The shock of what had happened with Magda’s foot had hit me like a hammer and after I got the whiskey into me I’d been on autopilot.

“Nice and easy,” the other cop, the one with his hand hovering over his gun, said to me. He looked to the man on the bench, who was still shaking his head slowly and wiping tears from his eyes. “You okay over there?”

“Stay there and we’ll talk to you in a minute,” the first cop said, putting his nightstick away as he kneeled down to look at me where I’d sat on the sidewalk. “So preacher man, want to tell us what’s going on?”

“Michael. I don’t know what’s going on. I need to get off the streets, man. Take me away.”

He stood up and spoke into the radio on his collar. I looked around the streets. People walked past and I was invisible again. Just another drunk loser and the cops that were keeping them safe from whatever madness I might start spitting at them. The guy I’d pushed was still ranting and the cops calmed him down and took his statement and he left. The other guy had retrieved his briefcase and umbrella and was standing nearby like he wanted to talk to me.

“What?” I snapped at him.

“You…I’ve never…what was that?” he stammered.

“The truth, man. It was the truth,” I mumbled.

“You’re going to need a lawyer,” he said, stepping over towards me. He pulled a card from his pocket and held it out to me.”I’m a public defender. My name is Paul. Paul Presswood. Call me when they’ve got you booked, okay? I want to help.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, taking the card. “Whatever, man. Fuck off.”

“Let’s go preacher man,” one of the cops said, standing me up and handcuffing me. A cop car had pulled up to the curb and they put me in the backseat.

“Call me,” the lawyer I’d manhandled said as they closed the door.

Standing On the Corner of Gin and Vermouth…

I’d given them Paul’s card and said ‘I want this guy’ when they asked me about a lawyer. I was going to use my one phone call to call Samael to get me out, but he was the last person I’d wanted to hear speaking to me at that moment. The more I thought about it the more I realized that I didn’t want anyone to come get me out. It was probably better if I stayed in jail. It wasn’t the first time I’d been arrested, but those times were all different; drunk and disorderly, drunk in public, causing a disturbance, urinating in a public place. I’d never been charged with assault before. Some part of me, distant and retreating, realized that I was a menace. I was dangerous. I could easily have killed that guy if he’d hit the paper box at a different angle. I was strong; stronger than I should have been for my size. Call it a circumstance of my birth. Call it genetic. Call it my family curse; I was strong enough to do great things and dumb enough not to.

I was standing at the phone with the handful of change they’d given me to make my call, and I put the coins in and dialed with shaking hands. My heart was pounding and my knees felt weak. My mouth was dry and I could barely make my mouth form words.

“Hello?” Her voice was like little bells and I bit my lip and fought my tears when I heard it after so many years.

“Hi,” I croaked. “It’s me…it’s Michael.”

“Michael…oooooh, Michael,” her voice caught and shook with emotion. “Michael, I miss you.”

“I miss you too, Mom.” A tear won its freedom and slid down my face as I leaned my forehead against the phone and struggled not to just hang it up.

“Michael, where are you?” she asked me desperately. I could tell she was crying and it broke my heart. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, sliding down to sit on the rigid metal bench bolted to the white brick wall next to the phone. “I’m fine.”

“Don’t lie to me Michael,” my mother said. “You’ve never been any good at it.”

“Sorry Mom,” I said, putting the side of my head against the phone and closing my eyes against my tears. “Sorry for a lot of things.”

“It’s been seven years. Why haven’t you called? Whatever it is, I’m so sorry my precious little son,” she said, her voice getting more torn by tears by the second. “I love you, Michael.”

“I know, Mom. I know. I love you too,” I forced out.

“We all do. Very much,” she struggled to keep her voice even and failed. “Come home Michael. I need to see you and know that you’re okay.”

“I can’t come home right now, Mom. I got in some trouble.”

“Do you need money? What can I do?” she asked pleadingly. I hated hearing her like this. I hated knowing I’d done this. This was why I hadn’t called in so long; the more time went by the harder I knew it would be so the less I’d wanted to do it.

“No, I’ll be fine. I just couldn’t think who else to call.”

“Who else to call? Michael…are you in jail, Michael?” her little voice asked through the phone, cracking and breaking and stabbing into my heart like a steak knife.

“Yup,” I said plainly.

“Oh geez, Michael. What did you do?” She sounded terrified. She knew more than anyone what I was capable of.

“It’s alright, don’t be scared,” I said before she could wind herself up. “No one’s hurt. It’s fine.”

“Not now, Mom. Please not now. I just needed to hear your voice. Don’t put this guilt on me right now.” I said, harsher than I’d meant to.

She just sobbed into the phone, broken and defeated sounding. A few seconds passed where we didn’t say anything. My face twisted and bent as I fought not to break down as she was. Finally she spoke again.

“What did I do wrong, Michael? Please tell me what I did and I’ll fix it, I promise you I’ll fix it…”

“Stop, please Mom. Just stop. I didn’t call for this. I just wanted you to know I love you. I saw Samael yesterday and he told me some things. Things about you, and what happened, and why…I didn’t know. I wanted to say I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

My own sadness disappeared under a layer of anger. “You mean you fucking knew and you never told me!? What the fuck!?”

A cop was walking over; motioning for me to hang up, telling me to calm down.

“Michael, there was no way to know. I didn’t want to make things harder for you,” she was saying in a rush, her words tumbling over one another as new sadness brought new tears to her voice. “I’m sorry Mi…”

I didn’t wait to hear it. I hung up on her as being mad took over for being sad. She’d known? They’d all known? Now I couldn’t wait to see Samael again. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on him and show him what a stupid mistake they’d all made in not telling me what was going to happen to me some day. Who puts a kid through that? Who lets someone walk around with this…thing… inside of them and doesn’t fucking tell them?

It could wait though, at least a little while. My lawyer was here.

Paul got me out. He still wouldn’t tell me why he was so eager to help me. I don’t know what he saw when I put my hand on him; I didn’t even really know what I was doing while I did it. He had a strange look in his eyes though. It wasn’t the same as when people looked in my eyes and just did what I wanted them to. It was deeper than that and it made me feel cold inside. Standing outside the police station he looked like he wanted to say something to me but was too afraid.

“What?” I snapped, spinning on him.

“You’re my client, Michael. I looked you up. I know who you are now. I have to say…I’m honored to meet you,” Paul said.

“Ah fuck, whatever man,” I said dismissively.

“What you showed me. I can’t explain it, but I know it’s important.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I didn’t do anything,” I muttered, leaning out to look down the street to see if the bus was coming. “Thanks though, for getting me out.”

“So you’ve got the court date? I’ll call to remind you,” he said as the bus pulled up, seeming desperate like he was going to fall apart when I left. “I’ll call…”

“Yeah, whatever. Later,” I said as I got on the bus. I looked out the window as it pulled away from the curb and he was still staring at me with that awed look on his face. I had a bad habit of leaving people with odd looks on their faces in my wake.

This was a new one though, and I liked it even less.

When I Said It, I Didn’t Know I’d be Quoted Later…

Magda was still at my apartment when I walked in. Not only was she still there, but she’d drank the wine and cleaned my whole place. She’d done my laundry, washed my sheets and curtains, and scrubbed the bathroom. She’d cleaned the kitchen, mopped the floor, and vacuumed somehow. I didn’t even own a mop or a vacuum. I didn’t even take my shoes off when I was at home. Ironic then that now I wasn’t even wearing shoes.

“Hi!” she said when she heard me come in and shut the door. “I hope you like casserole, there wasn’t much here to cook with…”

“What? Yeah, fine.”

“I kinda picked the place up a bit,” she said, looking around with a proud look on her face.

“Yeah, thanks,” I mumbled.

So there she was, Magda with her small smile and uneven hair, doing domestic shit in my hovel of an apartment. She’d seemed different, not clinging and cloying like every other girl that I met, and yet there she was in my place. They all wanted to move in. I’d thought she was different. She was different but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly how. She didn’t swoon when I looked at her. She didn’t stare blankly at me and wait for me to say something clever. She didn’t hang off of me. She actually seemed to like me for me; why I had no fucking clue. There wasn’t much there to like.

“You look mad…” she said nervously, picking her cracked and worn leather jacket up from where it draped over the arm of the couch. “I should have just left, I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

“Wait,” I said as she was stepping through the door to the hallway. “You don’t have to go. That’s not why I’m mad.”

“Did I do something wrong? Was it because of this morning? When I got out of the shower?”

“No, fuck. It’s not that either. It’s family shit,” I explained to Magda.

“At least you have one. I don’t have anyone,” she said, still poised half in and half out of my apartment door, ready to bolt at any moment if she thought she needed to.

“Come on,” I said, waving her back inside. “You don’t have to go.”

“Really? You’re sure?” Magda looked scared, ready to flee. I could tell it was a well honed instinct in her, a flinch instinct born out of desperation and practice. I knew the feeling well.

“Yeah, sure. Come back in.”

She came back in, closing the door and slowly taking her jacket off. She was looking at me warily, ready to disconnect and bolt at the slightest indication. “Thanks. You’re a sweet guy…”

“Ha!” I laughed. “You say that now. Everyone thinks that at first.”

She went back into the kitchen and looked in my oven. It had probably been the only thing in the apartment she hadn’t had to clean; I’d never even turned the thing on the whole time I’d lived there. I ate out of bags and boxes, not off plates. “Michael, how’d my foot get better just like that?”

“I don’t know,” I lied.

“Why’d you just bail like that, man?” she asked me, taking a dish I didn’t even remember owning out of the oven. Whatever was in it smelled good, which is more than I can say for me.

“Uh…it’s a long story Magda.” I said quietly. “I have to have a shower.”

“All your clothes are clean!” she said, a look of pride returning to her face. “Go on, I’ll just sit and wait for you…”

When I was clean and dressed we ate in relative silence. She looked like she wanted to talk but she didn’t say anything. She looked worried I wouldn’t like what she had cooked, but I did. I don’t know if this food had been in my cupboards behind empty chip bags and abandoned bottles or if she had bought it somewhere, but it was real food and it was hot.

“I like being able to do something for someone,” she said after I thanked her and she was washing dished in my tiny little kitchen. “I feel useful. Like I’m actually good for something.”

There was an honesty to the way she was just laying bare her fears and insecurities to me. She was actually talking to me, not my eyes like the rest of them did. It made me uncomfortable to have to actually engage with someone, but it was nice too. Unfamiliar, but nice.

“So you’ve got no one?” I asked her.

Her face turned sad for a second and she paused with her hands wrist deep in the soapy water of my sink. “Nope. No one that’s any good anyways.”

I didn’t know what to do here. I didn’t know what’s supposed to happen next. This isn’t the sort of thing I did. I didn’t make friends, I didn’t have conversations, I didn’t let people in. I searched my brain for something intelligent sounding, but all I came up with was, “Oh, that sucks.”

She laughed a quiet laugh and made a face I couldn’t decipher. Her mind bubbled with images I didn’t understand. I’d never really learned how to brush against surface thoughts and make sense of them. People don’t think in words unless they’re talking to someone and you have to work at it to be able to decipher them within the context of the person thinking them.

“Yeah, man,” she said in her soft and quiet voice, looking at me for second before turning her attention back to the plate she was rinsing off under the tap. “Yeah, it sucks.

“I ran away from home when I was 12 because my step dad liked to touch me and smack my mom around. I’ve been on my own ever since. Five years. Sometimes it gets really bad out there. Sometimes you meet some really… bad people.”

“I didn’t mean to pry,” I said, looking away and feeling bad.

“Heeeey, stop. You didn’t,” Magda said, drying her hands on a towel I didn’t know I owned. “You didn’t even ask…I told you.”

“I saw some stuff when I was cleaning,” she said nervously, looking at her feet. “I wasn’t snooping, I just saw some stuff. Pictures in that album over there. I didn’t snoop, honest, it fell open and they fell out is all.”

“You don’t have to be afraid of me, Magda,” I said, feeling bad that she seemed so afraid of what might happen if I wasn’t pleased with her. The things this girl must have gone through…I didn’t even want to know. “What’d you see?”

“Family stuff, I think,” she looked even more scared now. “If you don’t mind me saying, it didn’t look so bad. That house in the pictures looked really big and fancy. That’s in LA, isn’t it?”

“Yeah it is. Fancy I mean. It’s in Hollywood.”

“And the other one? It looked like there were two of them. Did you move there later?” Magda asked, pouring coffee she had made for both of us and sitting back down at my little table by the window that overlooked the parking lot below.

“No, they own both,” I said.

“So…I don’t want to be rude or nosey…but what was so bad about that? The people in those pictures look really nice, Michael.”

“I guess they are,” I said, picking up the cup and sipping. It was probably the best coffee I’d ever had. “But there was nothing there for me. No room for Michael, just the person they wanted Michael to be.”

“Oh,” Magda said quietly, nervously, shyly. “I get it I guess.”

“You guess?” I asked, laughing. “Trust me, it was fucked up.”

“Well…I…I…” she stammered quietly.

“You what?” I said to her, trying to sound reassuring.

“Well…I recognize the people, Michael. I know who they are.”

Of course she did. My own instinct to retreat reared its head and I forced myself to ignore it. I forced myself to stick this out because Magda seemed to actually like me. “Yeah. I guess they’re not easy to miss.”

“I won’t ask again,” she said softly and quietly. “I’m sorry I said anything. I should have kept my mouth shut. I’m sorry.”

It was getting dark outside. The day can really slip away from you when you sleep until afternoon, wander around drunk accosting strangers until evening, and then hang out in a police station for a couple hours. I put my hand on Magda’s where it was resting on the table and she looked up at me, her face a mixture of practiced caution and hope. “Look Magda, I’m tired. I need to sleep. It’s been a bitch of a day for me. You can stay if you want, I’ll take the couch.”

“Well…I was hoping…earlier today…” she stammered. “Well, it was just nice to be near someone that didn’t, you know, want anything from me. Can I sleep with you again?”

“It was, wasn’t it?” I asked her. I realized that I was getting as much out of this as she was. Neither of us were used to someone actually looking at us for who we were. Everyone always wanted something from us. We were both conduits for people’s hidden and not-so-hidden desires. In the other we had found someone that wanted nothing and gave everything freely in return.

“Yeah, it was really nice,” she said. I could tell Magda was terrified I’d reject her and so she had already accepted it, stating how nice it was with the finality and acceptance of someone who knew it was already gone.

“Come on then,” I said, standing and taking her by the hand. Her face lit up with an unsteady smile, glad but wary like a kid offered a second piece of pie who was afraid it was all a joke and a lie. Like as soon as she reached for it it would be withdrawn with a laugh and a slap.

“Thanks,” she said softly. Her voice was so quiet and hollow and withdrawn, not unlike my own.

In my bedroom she shifted nervously on her feet and then slowly pulled her t shirt off over her head. Her chest was bare and her breasts were small and round. She held her arms nervously over her chest before slowly moving them down and unzipping her old threadbare jeans as I unbuttoned my shirt and let my pants fall to the floor. She turned her back to me as she lowered them over her hips to show her bare ass. It was gently rounded, her hips flaring out from her narrow waist. She had bruises on her right shoulder blade and a small scar, old and faint, on the top curve of the left side of her ass. I stood behind her and put my right hand on her right shoulder, my left caressing her softly over the scar.

“What are these from?” I asked her quietly.

“Like I said,” she whispered, leaning her back against my chest. “Sometimes you meet some bad people on the streets.”

Magda’s voice caught for a second when she said it and she took my hands in hers and pulled my arms tightly around her body. She shivered slightly, naked in my arms, and goose bumps covered her soft skin. She leaned he head back against me and took in a shaky breath and I lowered my face to her to kiss her softly on the side of her neck.

“You…we don’t have to do this,” I whispered into her ear.

“I know,” she said. The orange glow of the city coming in through my window lit her face as a comfortable smile spread across her lips. “That’s why it’s okay.”

Magda turned around in my arms and put her mouth to mine. Her lips were soft and her movements shy and cautious. We stood in the pale glow and kissed with our hands sliding up and down each other’s backs. It was slow and soft, unlike the passionate grasping and groping I was used to. I slowly lowered her backwards onto my bed and lay down beside her, our lips still pressed together and barely parted, and our hands began to explore the rest of our bodies.

Her small breasts were firm, her skin still covered in little nervous bumps, and she shook slightly when I would move my hands from one part of her to another. Her touches against my skin were nervous and tentative, and I took in a quick breath of surprise when one of her hands found my cock and wrapped around it.

“Will you touch me…down there?” she whispered between kisses.

I slid my hand down her flat stomach and moved my fingers through her soft hair above her pussy, touching her slowly and gently. Magda moaned quietly as we touched each other softly. She put her hand through the opening in the front of my boxer shorts and cautiously removed my hard cock to stroke it with the soft skin of her hand. I pushed one of my fingers past her moist and partially parted lips and into the wetness of her pussy’s opening and she arched her back and sighed. I opened my eyes and looked at her, her face peaceful and serene and her mouth opening and closing slightly as I moved my finger in and out of her and in little circles at the top of her wet slit. For many minutes we lay there like that, touching and stroking at each other and sighing and moaning and kissing gently.

Soon Magda’s hips were tilting up and down in time with my caresses and she rolled onto her side with her back against my chest. She reached between us and guided my cock to her opening, pushing her hips back towards me as I pushed forward. With some resistance my head entered her and I felt her whole body quiver and tense up. She relaxed almost at once and I slid slowly inside of her clutching and wet pussy. Magda let out a loud moan as I entered her and when I reached her full depth we both paused and breathed in unison.

“Are you sure you want…” I started to whisper.

“Don’t talk. Just hold me, Michael,” she cut me off.

I wrapped my arms around her, one hand on her flat stomach and the other reaching around under her slender waist to reach up and cradle one of her breasts. Our in synch breathing turned slowly into a gentle rocking motion of our hips. We lay together, our bodies locked tight together, and I made love to Magda. I came in her three times before we both fell asleep in each other’s arms, sweaty and breathless, naked on top of the sheets.

For the first time in years I awoke sober and with a smile. I was still lying behind Magda with my arms around her, and she took in a long breath and looked over her shoulder at me.

“Good morning,” she said in her soft little voice. She held my arms tight around her and a smile stretched across her face as well.

Heyyyyy.....you promised to upload till the 5th part by Friday. So shouldn't be the 4th one uploaded by now? It's just that i am so eager to see how you reveal all the secrets of the plot eventually. Not to say that i'm happy with the series ending. :)